Axle Payments Rebrands to Denim, Raises $126 Million to Scale Financial Automation and Payments Platform for Freight Industry

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Sep 15, 2022, 08:05 ET

The new brand symbolizes the company's mission to build a stronger supply chain through its flexible and easy-to-use platform

NEW YORK, Sept. 15, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Denim, the leading financial enablement platform for the freight and logistics industry, today announced the closing of a $126 million Series B led by Pelion Venture Partners, including $26 million in equity financing and $100 million in debt financing. The funding is a combination of equity to scale its platform and debt financing to provide working capital to freight brokerages. Along with its new capital, the company also reintroduced itself as Denim.

"The core challenge our clients face is adapting to the pressures of an increasingly complex and unpredictable supply chain. Freight brokers — and the shippers and carriers they work with — must find ways to evolve how they do business together with smarter tools," said Bharath Krishnamoorthy, chief executive officer and co-founder of Denim. "Denim is pioneering the financial enablement market to meet this challenge, benefiting all parties along the supply chain. With the support of our investors, we'll continue to scale and serve our clients while strengthening our position as a payments ecosystem that powers the supply chain."

Last year, Denim quadrupled its revenue, and this year facilitated nearly 60,000 jobs between shippers, carriers and freight brokers through its platform. This year alone, the brand scaled the team 200%. Denim will leverage the funding to continue scaling the team and fuel product expansion efforts to meet the growing needs of the $134 billion freight broker market. Specifically, Denim will continue to build on its strong customer demand by providing flexible financing and automation tools that reduce daily payments and collections tasks by 75%.

The Series B funding round, which was led by Pelion Venture Partners, included participation from Crosslink Capital, Anthemis, Trucks VC, FJ Labs, Tribeca Early Stage Partners, and Refashiond Ventures. In total, Denim has raised $165 million in three years.

"Denim's innovation within the freight and logistics space has connected thousands through a payments infrastructure that streamlines the flow of money and data — an area where we see a great need for technological advancement and one where Denim will continue to capitalize. We are excited to partner with Bharath, Shawn, the rest of Denim's leadership team, and our co-investors as the company continues its growth trajectory," said Blake Modersitzki, managing partner at Pelion Venture Partners.

The new brand, Denim, symbolizes the company's goal to build a stronger supply chain through reliable, flexible and easy-to-use tools. Comparable to how denim revolutionized the way people work and dress, Denim's financial enablement platform is on a path to making freight shipment payments easy and trustworthy at every step of the supply chain.

"Denim embodies who we are as a team and what we want to achieve in the freight and logistics industry - to be a reliable, essential, and universal partner to our clients," said Shawn Vo, chief technology officer and co-founder of Denim. "In the last year, our business has evolved and grown dramatically, including enhancements to our platform that help our clients optimize their financial decisions and considerable additions to our teams. We're excited to unveil our new name and branding as we move into the next phase of growth."

For more information, please visit www.Denim.com or follow Denim on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

About Denim

Denim is a financial enablement platform for the logistics industry that offers an ecosystem of intelligent financial products, operations tools, and time-saving automation. Its proprietary technology enables freight brokers to simplify their financing operations and easily access the working capital they need to grow in the competitive, $2 trillion logistics market. Denim automates invoicing, collections, and payments — ultimately reducing daily payments and collections tasks by 75%. A remote-first company, Denim has been named a Best Place To Work by Built In and Best Workplace for Innovators by Fast Company. Denim is not associated with Axle Logistics.

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SOURCE Denim